Lewis Hamilton appeared somewhat suspicious of a lack of power in his Ferrari, as the Briton laboured to sixth place in the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix.
Hamilton has been far more upbeat and positive this year, after a woeful first season with the Scuderia.
An exciting tussle with teammate Charles Leclerc and the Mercedes duo in Australia was thwarted by an intra-team strategic blunder, followed by another enthrallng duel with Leclerc in China, scoring his first podium in scarlet red.
But in Japan, Hamilton did not fare well. Qualifying sixth, the seven-time World Champion was unable to extract himself from the ‘best of the rest’ portion of the pack.
Eventually losing fifth to Lando Norris after a long exchange of track position, Hamilton finished where he started, with Leclerc capitalising on an early Safety Car to finish third, ahead of George Russell.
Hamilton’s positivity has largely been sourced from an ability to feel more of an affinity with the SF-26, due to having developed it with personal input. But at Suzuka, he was left to rue a difficult afternoon.
“I just struggled with power in the race. Some reason I was just down,” he told media including Motorsport Week. “I was in a defence. I was defending the whole time.
“The guys all around me, just seemed to have more power today.
“So I need to try and understand why that is the case, whether my engine was down or what. I need to understand that.”
“Somehow, Charles had more power than me today, in the same car. So I need to understand why that is. He did a good job to get to third place. But, yeah, lacking power.”
Hamilton would be forgiven to ponder this across the month-long break F1 is now entering into, due to the Bahrain and Saudi races being cancelled.
But he has already intimated that he and the Maranello-based squad has been enjoying a lot better communication so far this year, despite still not being able to make use of his mooted new race engineer, Cedric Michel-Grosjean.
And if development can be made in that break, then Hamilton will be surely keen to be back out on track in Miami.
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